Old Weblog - December 2003

Some of England's rich variety of wild plants is disappearing in the face of an onslaught by pollution and invading competitors, the UK Government says.
A rare piece of evidence pointing to a dinosaur mothering her young after they had left the nest has been discovered on the Isle of Skye.
A hoard of nuts buried by a rodent 17 million years ago is the oldest food larder so far discovered in the fossil record, say scientists in Germany.
Fossils discovered in Ethiopia's highlands are a missing piece in the puzzle of how African mammals evolved… The find included several types of proboscideans, distant relatives of elephants, and fossils from the arsinoithere, a rhinoceros-like creature that had two huge bony horns on its snout and was about 7 feet high at the shoulder.
Creationists please note: not all gaps in the fossil record remain gaps forever.
A disease which has destroyed many thousands of Californian oaks has been found for the first time in several well-loved British tree species.
A newly discovered 425 million-year-old fossil boasts a lurid claim to fame - it has the oldest penis on record.
Lurid?
It is unlikely the dinosaurs perished in a global firestorm triggered by the asteroid strike on Earth 65 million years ago, scientists have claimed. A popular theory suggests the impact, which was centred on Chicxulub in Mexico, generated enough energy to set off a raging worldwide inferno. But a new study shows rocks laid down at the time contain little charcoal - a possible tell-tale record of fires.
The sex disease syphilis adapted from a severe, debilitating illness to a milder form in order to survive, research suggests. Sufferers became so repellent that they were unlikely to have sex. To ensure that they did, and continued to pass on the bacterium, it had to change.
A reminder that the purpose of a bacterium is not to cause diseases, but to make more bacteria like itself.
Trophy-hunting has taken an evolutionary toll on Canada's bighorn sheep, scientists said on Wednesday. Their magnificent horns are getting smaller because the biggest rams with the most impressive examples are being shot before they have mated and passed on their genes.
Artificial selection in action.
Sauropods - the largest and heaviest dinosaurs that ever existed - floated in water, according to new claims. A Canadian palaeontologist has used computer simulations to investigate how the extinct animals would have fared when immersed in a lake or river.
The oldest known fossil skeleton of an ancestor of modern marsupials has been unearthed in north-eastern China. The spectacular find is 50 million years older than the previous record holder, and helps to fill a key gap in the understanding of early mammal evolution.
Chimp gene map on the net (Aljazeera.Net: 12-Dec-03)
The first gene map of our closest relative, the chimpanzee, is drafted and on the internet for anyone to look at.
Rather bizarrely, this article about chimp genomes is illustrated with a photograph of an orangutan.

Several genes involved in the development of [human] hearing seem to have undergone "positive selection". That is, it seems that the capacity for hearing in humans has been specially tuned by natural selection. This in turn might have made possible, or at least helped along, the elaborate spoken language unique to humanity.

[R]esearchers announced yesterday that they had completed the first draft - in effect, a text with a fair few gaps and mistakes - of the entire DNA sequence of Pan troglodytes, the chimpanzee, and stored it in a public database, so that biologists all over the world can start matching humankind against its nearest relative.

Scientists claim to have found the oldest evidence of photosynthesis - the most important chemical reaction on Earth - in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks. Danish researchers say rocks from Greenland show life-forms were using the process about one billion years earlier than has previously been shown.
A senior UK Government scientist has said he may resign after reports he was not put forward for an honour because of his support for animal experiments. Colin Blakemore, head of the Medical Research Council, made the threat after details of deliberations of civil servants on the Honours Committee were leaked to papers.
Prof. Blakemore isn't the first British scientist to be discriminated against in this way for his 'controversial' work. He is in excellent company: Britain's greatest 19th Century scientist—indeed, I would argue, the world's greatest ever human being—remained plain old Mister Charles Darwin to the end of his days (despite having been actively considered for a knighthood). In my book, that makes him even greater.
Neanderthals were shedding their sturdy physique and evolving in the direction of modern humans just before they disappeared from the fossil record. Newly-identified remains from Vindija in Croatia, which date to between 42,000 and 28,000 years ago, are more delicate than "classic" Neanderthals. One controversial explanation is that these Neanderthals were interbreeding with modern humans in the region.
Two British men say they have seen a seabird thought to have become extinct more than a century and a half ago. The bird, the New Zealand storm petrel, was spotted a short distance off the country's North Island in November.
The prospects for the Beagle 2 lander on Mars look increasingly gloomy after a radio sweep of the planet failed to detect any sign of the UK-built probe.
This is a real shame. Professor Colin Pillinger and the other scientists involved had performed miracles getting Beagle 2 built and delivered to Mars. Sounds as if they could do with just one more miracle.
[…] Science must be given back to ordinary people and the key to that is education. I say that with some trepidation, given the political incorrectness of the phrase 'public understanding of science' and the new mantra of dialogue and debate. It doesn't really matter whether people know that the Earth goes round the Sun. But it does matter if they don't know what a control experiment is, if they think that science produces absolute certainties, if they see differences of opinion among scientists as an indication that the scientific process is flawed, or if they feel robbed of the right to make ethical judgments.
An excellent piece by Prof. (not Sir) Colin Blakemore, explaining why scientists need more engagement with the public. The piece makes reference to Charles Darwin's great friend, Sir Charles Lyell.